Mitten State Obsession

by Susan J. Demas
October 30, 2009

A few weeks ago, I took a leisurely drive down to Ann Arbor while listening to a Michigan Radio report on the woes of Baraga County, where one in four people is unemployed.

The reporter noted that the Upper Peninsula county holds dubious honor of having the third highest jobless rate in the country. As I usually write the grim monthly story on the latest carnage on Michigan’s employment front, this did not shock me.

Before transitioning into an amusing yarn on the Toledo War, “Weekend Edition” host Liane Hansen explained that this was part of her 10-part series on the U.P.’s trials and tribulations for National Public Radio. It was a charming effort mindful of the culture clash between the Mitten State’s two peninsulas, although it included the requisite report on the area success story (Marquette) and another on the local delicacy (pasties, of course).

Oddly, I couldn’t get the stories out of my head.

Now, I’m always amazed when news outlets devote precious resources to in-depth reporting on location, given the hellacious state of the industry today. But it was more than that.

Of all the places in America or the world, Ms. Hansen chose to come to da U.P., eh. And she found an abundance of stories to capture the attention of a national audience. Interesting.

Then I saw the über-dramatic, starkly lit photo essay, “The Remains of Detroit” splashed on the cover of Time. The magazine was launching its “Assignment Detroit” with typically self-indulgent fanfare and a cringingly prosaic tagline: “One year. One city. Endless opportunities.”

And it hit me: Michigan has achieved lab-rat status. With 15.3-percent unemployment, a $2.8-billion state budget deficit this year, one million jobs lost this decade (and perhaps the Detroit Lions’ impressively abysmal 0-16 season last year), things have finally deteriorated in the Great Lakes State to warrant national scrutiny.

Inquiring minds want to know: what exactly has made our state the disaster it is? Could it have been prevented? Will Michigan ever truly recover? And most chillingly, are we a harbinger of America’s impending decline?

Yes, for most of the decade, our fair state withered while the rest of the country boomed off the housing bubble. Detroit, of course, has been dying since the ’60s. But we were the buzzkill and could never seem to attract attention. Former President Bush wouldn’t invite Big Three auto execs to the White House even as their businesses nosedived (though I once heard a rumor that Rick Wagoner tried to pose as a Halliburton exec to get inside).

Now President Obama can’t send enough cabinet members here on a monthly, even weekly basis to lavish stimulus money on us for clean energy, worker retraining and the automakers themselves. Gov. Jennifer Granholm may as well buy a home in Washington for all the time she spends there. Naturally, this has to do with the fact that the prez wants to keep Michigan blue in 2010 and 2012 — a smart move after Bush’s neglect cost the GOP dearly here in the last two elections.

The media also have made Michigan their “It Girl” of the Great Recession. McNeil/Lehrer Productions just announced it will be swooping in to the Lansing Center from November 13 to 15 to interview 200 Michiganders on the state of our state.

Unfortunately, the national coverage thus far has been spotty at best. First, the bright spots. The New Republic’s Chris Bodenner has done the best reporting, hands down, on the struggling city of Standish, caught between the Obama administration’s push to relocate Guantanamo Bay terror suspects there and pushback from U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Holland) and his gubernatorial ambitions. Gautham Nagesh, a Jackson native, writes lyrical dispatches from Michigan for The Atlantic whenever he can.

Meanwhile, “CBS Evening News” did a surface-skimming piece in February on states competing for green jobs, a passion of the governor’s (and as it turns out, many others). The Washington Post this fall deployed a reporter for three weeks at our state Capitol before the government shutdown, but the result was a lackluster 1,200-word story on Michigan’s flailing economy.

Most disappointing has been the vaunted project by Time. Photographer Sean Hemmerle didn’t break any new ground in his cover story, shooting the Cliff’s Notes version of Motown’s meltdown, with eerily beautiful images of abandoned buildings like the Fisher Body Plant (which closed in 1991), Michigan Central Station (1988) and an oldie but goody, the Packard Plant (1956).

I’m confident that Wayne State University J-school students could put together a far more incisive package for The South End. After all, they live in the D, instead of just driving around it for an afternoon.

There’s an antiseptic and even condescending feel to a lot of the work, as national journalists seem to shy away from immersing themselves in the insular world of Michigan. Instead, they fall back on shopworn stereotypes, like CNN interviewing hard-boiled white autoworkers at a smoky Macomb County bowling alley for the Reagan Democrat election night segment that’s been a staple since 1980.

Still, it beats the nation ignoring us while we bleed. As Americans become aware of our plight, we can hope it will force us to ask ourselves the hard questions about how we became the poster child for decline. And then inspire us to make an unbelievable comeback, as the Wolverine State has managed to do so many times before.

Susan J. Demas is a 2006 Knight Foundation Fellow in nonprofits journalism and a political analyst for Michigan Information & Research Service.